The authorities of the Labor Inspection were extended from January 1, 2021. According to the amendments made to the Labor Code, the inspection will be able to check companies without warning. If earlier labor inspections were mainly related to the issues of labor safety, now it would also control the labor rights.
Mikheil Kordzakhia, Expert on Labor Law and Labor Safety and President of the Association "Business Georgia" negatively assesses expansion of the labor inspection mandate. He says that there are risks of corruption and at the same time neither the business nor the inspection itself is ready for the implementation of this mechanism.
"This issue is so promoted that it is done in favor of the employers, but in practice we can make a rather pessimistic prediction. The increased mandate of the labor inspection will not work, in the best case it will work for 10%, in the other case we will get a worse picture, which includes corruption risks.
This means that neither the employer nor the employee is willing to enforce the mechanism, for example in overtime hours - the employee is interested in working hard and getting more, but the employer is interested in working hard and giving the same, so changing this formula is quite difficult, because you really have to turn the economy around. The picture is not changed only by wishes and dreams," said Mikheil Kordzakhia.
The expert believes that labor safety standards set out in the Association Agreement can be met by other rational approaches. However, it must be written in a timely manner, as the commitments in this regard should be fulfilled by 2023. Consequently, the extended mandate of the Labor Inspection is a hasty decision.
"If we assume that the country has commitments under the Association Agreement, there is a need to make changes. However, I would look at it more differently. There was a greater need to strengthen the judiciary and labor law than to create such “dry” mechanisms with high risks of corruption.
With the conclusion of the Association Agreement, the government had to think logically in 2014 about what could be done in the direction of labor safety. Now the issue must be resolved a bit rationally. Unfortunately, this rationalism is not reflected in these decisions. This is a simpler solution, a hand washing policy," said the expert.
Mikheil Kordzakhia says that today the Labor Inspection has no resources for enforcement of extended rights, which once again confirms the idea that the monitoring and inspection mechanism will be conducted in some companies.
"The labor inspection has neither human nor financial resources, I do not know how radical changes can be made in the budget to that regard. As it seems, this inspection will be performed for some companies, while - not for others. Moreover, there is not mechanism for investigating why the inspection was performed in those companies and not others. So, it will not give us any results”, Mikheil Kordzakhia told BM.GE.
